David Thompson (explorer) Appearance and personality
What was Thompson like as a person?
What was David Thompson like as a person?
In 1820, the English geologist, John Jeremiah Bigsby, attended a dinner party given by The Hon. William McGillivray at his home, Chateau St. Antoine, one of the early estates in Montreal's Golden Square Mile. He describes the party and some of the guests in his entertaining book The Shoe and Canoe, giving an excellent description of David Thompson:  I was well placed at table between one of the Miss McGillivray's and a singular-looking person of about fifty. He was plainly dressed, quiet, and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener's ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply-furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look. His speech betrayed the Welshman, although he left his native hills when very young. I might have been spared this description of Mr David Thompson by saying he greatly resembled Curran the Irish Orator...  I afterwards travelled much with him, and have now only to speak of him with great respect, or, I ought to say, with admiration... No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson's Bay countries... Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair; he has a very powerful mind, and a singular faculty of picture-making. He can create a wilderness and people it with warring savages, or climb the Rocky Mountains with you in a snow-storm, so clearly and palpably, that only shut your eyes and you hear the crack of the rifle, or feel the snow-flakes melt on your cheeks as he talks. CANNOTANSWER
He was plainly dressed, quiet, and observant.
David Thompson (30 April 1770 – 10 February 1857) was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer, known to some native peoples as Koo-Koo-Sint or "the Stargazer". Over Thompson's career, he traveled  across North America, mapping  of North America along the way. For this historic feat, Thompson has been described as the "greatest practical land geographer that the world has produced".

Early life
David Thompson was born in Westminster, Middlesex, to recent Welsh migrants David and Ann Thompson. When Thompson was two, his father died. Due to the financial hardship with his mother without resources, Thompson, 29 April 1777, the day before his seventh birthday, and his older brother were placed in the Grey Coat Hospital, a school for the disadvantaged of Westminster. Thompson graduated to the Grey Coat mathematical school, well known for teaching navigation and surveying. He received an education for the Royal Navy: including mathematics of trigonometry and geometry, practical navigation including using of nautical instruments, finding latitudes and longitudes and making navigational calculations from observing the sun, moon and tides and the drawing of maps and charts, taking land measurements and sketching landscapes. He later built on these to make his career. In 1784, at the age of 14, the Grey Coat treasurer paid the Hudson's Bay Company the sum of five pounds, upon which Thompson became the company's indentured servant for a period of seven years to be trained as a clerk. He set sail on 28 May of that year, and left England for North America.

Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)
On 2 September 1784, Thompson arrived in Churchill (now in Manitoba) and was put to work as a clerk/secretary, copying the personal papers of the governor of Fort Churchill, Samuel Hearne. The next year he was transferred to nearby York Factory, and over the next few years spent time as a secretary at Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, and South Branch House before arriving at Manchester House in 1787. During those years he learned to keep accounts and other records, calculate values of furs (It was noted that he also had several expensive beaver pelts at that time even when a secretary's job would not pay terribly well), track supplies and other duties.

On 23 December 1788, Thompson seriously fractured his tibia, forcing him to spend the next two winters at Cumberland House convalescing. It was during this time that he greatly refined and expanded his mathematical, astronomical, and surveying skills under the tutelage of Hudson's Bay Company surveyor Philip Turnor. It was also during this time that he lost sight in his right eye.

In 1790, with his apprenticeship nearing its end, Thompson requested a set of surveying tools in place of the typical parting gift of fine clothes offered by the company to those completing their indenture. He received both. He entered the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company as a fur trader. In 1792 he completed his first significant survey, mapping a route to Lake Athabasca (where today's Alberta/Saskatchewan border is located). Between February and May 1793, Thompson made 34 observations of the longitude of Cumberland House using lunar distances. The mean of these observations was 102°12′ W, about 2' east of the modern value. The mean error of the 34 observations was about 15' of longitude. Broughton (2009) notes that the precision of the type of sextant used by Thompson was 15" of arc, corresponding to 7.5' of longitude giving an absolute limit to the precision of an individual observation. The error in Thompson's mean was several times less than this. The time he took on these observations, about 3 hours of calculation each, indicates that he understood the power of averages.

In recognition of his map-making and surveying skills, the company promoted Thompson to the surveyor in 1794. He continued working for the Hudson's Bay Company until 23 May 1797 when, frustrated by an order to cease surveying and focus on the fur trade, he left. He walked  in the snow in order to enter the employ of the competition, the North West Company. There he continued to work as a fur trader and surveyor.

North West Company

Thompson's decision to defect to the North West Company (NWC) in 1797 without providing the customary one-year notice was not well received by his former employers. But the North West Company was more supportive of Thompson pursuing his work on  surveying and mapping the interior of what was to become Canada, as they judged it in the company's interest to know the exact locations of their settlements and the distance from each other. In 1797, Thompson was sent south by his employers to survey part of the Canada-US boundary along the water routes from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods to satisfy unresolved questions of territory arising from the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States after the American Revolutionary War.

By 1798 Thompson had completed a survey of  from Grand Portage, through Lake Winnipeg, to the headwaters of the Assiniboine and Mississippi rivers, as well as two sides of Lake Superior. In 1798, the company sent him to Red Deer Lake (Lac La Biche in present-day Alberta) to establish a trading post. (The English translation of Lac la Biche: Red Deer Lake, was first recorded on the Mackenzie map of 1793.) Thompson spent the next few seasons trading based in Fort George (now in Alberta), and during this time led several expeditions into the Rocky Mountains.

On 10 July 1804, at the annual meeting of the North West Company in Kaministiquia, Thompson was made a full partner of the company. He became a 'wintering partner', who was based in the field rather than Montreal, with two of the 92 NWC's shares worth more than £4,000. He spent the next few seasons based there managing the fur trading operations but still finding time to expand his surveys of the waterways around Lake Superior. At the 1806 company meeting, officers decided to send Thompson back out into the interior. Concern over the American-backed expedition of Lewis and Clark prompted the North West Company to charge Thompson with the task of finding a route to the Pacific to open up the lucrative trading territories of the Pacific Northwest.

Columbia River travels

After the general meeting in 1806, Thompson travelled to Rocky Mountain House and prepared for an expedition to follow the Columbia River to the Pacific. In June 1807 Thompson crossed the Rocky Mountains and spent the summer surveying the Columbia basin; he continued to survey the area over the next few seasons. Thompson mapped and established trading posts in Northwestern Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Western Canada. Trading posts he founded included Kootenae House, Kullyspell House and Saleesh House; the latter two were the first trading posts west of the Rockies in Idaho and Montana, respectively. These posts established by Thompson extended North West Company fur trading territory into the Columbia Basin drainage area. The maps he made of the Columbia River basin east of the Cascade Mountains were of such high quality and detail that they continued to be useful into the 20th-century.

In early 1810, Thompson was returning eastward toward Montreal but, while en route at Rainy Lake, received orders to return to the Rocky Mountains and establish a route to the mouth of the Columbia. The North West Company was responding to the plans of American John Jacob Astor to send a ship around the Americas to establish a fur trading post of the Pacific Fur Company on the Pacific Coast. During his return, Thompson was delayed by an angry group of Peigan natives at Howse Pass. He was ultimately forced to seek a new route across the Rocky Mountains and found one through the Athabasca Pass.

David Thompson was the first European to navigate the full length of the Columbia River. Between Kettle Falls (3 July 1811) and the Junction of the Columbia and Snake Rivers (9 July) he was travelling through country that had never been visited by Europeans, and took time to visit the villages along the way to establish good relations, helped by copious quantities of tobacco. In 1805 Lewis and Clark had descended the Snake River, and then continued down the Columbia. On reaching the junction Thompson erected a pole and a notice claiming the country for Great Britain and stating the intention of the North West Company to build a trading post at the site. This notice was found later that year by Astor company workers looking to establish an inland fur post, contributing to their selection of a more northerly site at Fort Okanogan. The North West Company established its post of Fort Nez Percés near the Snake River confluence several years later. Continuing down the Columbia, Thompson passed over the Celilo Falls, almost losing the canoe on the rocks, and portaged around the rapids of The Dalles and the Cascades Rapids. On 14 July 1811, Thompson reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, arriving two months after the Pacific Fur Company's ship, the Tonquin.

Before returning upriver and across the mountains, Thompson hired Naukane, a Native Hawaiian Takane labourer brought to Fort Astoria by the Pacific Fur Company's ship Tonquin. Naukane, known as Coxe to Thompson, accompanied Thompson across the continent to Lake Superior before journeying on to England.

Thompson wintered at Saleesh House before beginning his final journey back to Montreal in 1812, where the North West Company was based.

In his published journals, Thompson recorded seeing large footprints (“which measured fourteen inches in length by eight inches in breadth”) near what is now Jasper, Alberta, in 1811. It has been suggested that these prints were similar to what has since been called the sasquatch. However, Thompson noted that these tracks showed "a small Nail at the end of each [toe]", and stated that these tracks "very much resembles a large Bear's Track".

The years 1807-1812 are the most carefully scrutinized in his career and his most enduring historical legacy, due to his development of the commercial routes across the Rockies, and his mapping of the lands they traverse.

Appearance and personality

In 1820, the English geologist, John Jeremiah Bigsby, attended a dinner party given by The Hon. William McGillivray at his home, Chateau St. Antoine, one of the early estates in Montreal's Golden Square Mile. He describes the party and some of the guests in his entertaining book The Shoe and Canoe, giving an excellent description of David Thompson:

Marriage and children
On 10 June 1799 at Île-à-la-Crosse, Thompson married Charlotte Small, a thirteen-year-old Métis daughter of Scottish fur trader Patrick Small and a Cree mother. Their marriage was formalised thirteen years later at the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Montreal on 30 October 1812. He and Charlotte had 13 children together; five of them were born before he left the fur trade. The family did not adjust easily to life in Eastern Canada; they lived in Montreal while he was traveling. Two of the children, John (aged 5) and Emma (aged 7), died of round worms, a common parasite. By the time of Thompson's death, the couple had been married 57 years, the longest marriage known in Canada pre-Confederation.

Later life

Upon his arrival back in Montreal, Thompson retired with a generous pension from the North West Company. He settled in nearby Terrebonne and worked on completing his great map, a summary of his lifetime of exploring and surveying the interior of North America. The map covered the wide area stretching from Lake Superior to the Pacific, and was given by Thompson to the North West Company. Thompson's 1814 map, his greatest achievement, was so accurate that 100 years later it was still the basis for many of the maps issued by the Canadian government. It now resides in the Archives of Ontario.

In 1815, Thompson moved his family to Williamstown, Upper Canada, and a few years later was employed to survey the newly established borders with the United States from Lake of the Woods to the Eastern Townships of Quebec, established by Treaty of Ghent after the War of 1812. In 1843 Thompson completed his atlas of the region from Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

Afterwards, Thompson returned to a life as a land owner, but soon financial misfortune would ruin him. By 1831 he was so deeply in debt he was forced to take up a position as a surveyor for the British American Land Company to provide for his family. His luck continued to worsen and he was forced to move in with his daughter and son-in-law in 1845. He began work on a manuscript chronicling his life exploring the continent, but this project was left unfinished when his sight failed him completely in 1851.

Death and afterward

The land mass mapped by Thompson amounted to  of wilderness (one-fifth of the continent). His contemporary, the great explorer Alexander Mackenzie, remarked that Thompson did more in ten months than he would have thought possible in two years.

Despite these significant achievements, Thompson died in Montreal in near obscurity on 10 February 1857, his accomplishments almost unrecognised. He never finished the book of his 28 years in the fur trade, based on his 77 field notebooks, before he died. In the 1890s geologist J.B. Tyrrell resurrected Thompson's notes and in 1916 published them as David Thompson's Narrative, as part of the General Series of the Champlain Society. Further editions and re-examinations of Thompson's life and works were published in 1962 by Richard Glover, in 1971 by Victor Hopwood, and in 2015 by William Moreau.

Thompson's body was interred in Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery in an unmarked grave. It was not until 1926 that efforts by J.B. Tyrrell and the Canadian Historical Society resulted in the placing of a tombstone to mark his grave. The next year, Thompson was named a National Historic Person by the federal government, one of the earliest such designations. A federal plaque reflecting that status is located at Jasper National Park, Alberta. Meantime, Thompson's achievements are central reasons for other national historic designations:
 David Thompson on the Columbia River National Historic Event, marked at Castlegar, BC
 Athabasca Pass National Historic Site (NHS), at Jasper National Park
 Boat Encampment NHS, BC
 Howse Pass NHS, Banff National Park, Alberta
 Kootenae House NHS, BC
 Rocky Mountain House NHS, Alberta

In 1957, one hundred years after his death, Canada's post office department honoured him with his image on a postage stamp. The David Thompson Highway in Alberta was named in his honour, along with David Thompson High School situated on the side of the highway near Leslieville, Alberta. There are also two David Thompson Secondary Schools, one in Vancouver, BC, and one in Invermere, BC.

His prowess as a geographer is now well-recognized. He has been called "the greatest land geographer that the world has produced."

There is a monument dedicated to David Thompson (maintained by the state of North Dakota) near the former town site of the ghost town Verendrye, North Dakota, located approximately  north and  west of Karlsruhe, North Dakota. Thompson Falls, Montana, and British Columbia's Thompson River and Thompson Falls on the Blaeberry River are also named after the explorer.

The year 2007 marked the 150th year of Thompson's death and the 200th anniversary of his first crossing of the Rocky Mountains. Commemorative events and exhibits were planned across Canada and the United States from 2007 to 2011 as a celebration of his accomplishments.

In 2007, a commemorative plaque was placed on a wall at the Grey Coat Hospital, the school for the disadvantaged of Westminster David Thompson attended as a boy, by English author and TV presenter Ray Mears.

Thompson was the subject of a 1964 National Film Board of Canada short film David Thompson: The Great Mapmaker , as well as the BBC2 programme Ray Mears' Northern Wilderness (Episode 5), broadcast in November 2009. He's also the subject of 2010 KSPS-TV film Uncharted Territory: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau.

He is referenced in the 1981 folk song "Northwest Passage" by Stan Rogers.

The national park service, Parks Canada, announced in 2018 that it had named its new research vessel , to be used for underwater archaeology, including sea floor mapping, and for marine science in the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic Oceans, and the Great Lakes. It will be the main platform for research on the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site.

The David Thompson Astronomical Observatory at Fort William Historical Park was named to commemorate David Thompson and his discoveries.

See also
 Exploration of North America
 Fur trade

Works
 1814: Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada
 1897: New light on the early history of the greater Northwest (edited by Elliott Coues) Volume I; Volume II; Volume III
 1916: David Thompson's narrative of his explorations in western America, 1784–1812 (edited by J.B. Tyrrell)
 1950: David Thompson's journals relating to Montana and adjacent regions, 1808–1812 (edited by M. Catherine White)
 1962: David Thompson's narrative, 1784–1812 (edited by Richard Glover)
 1974: David Thompson's journal of the international boundary survey, 1817–1827: western Lake Erie, August–September 1819 (edited by Clarke E. Leverette)
 1993: Columbia Journals (edited by Barbara Belyea)
 2006: "Moccasin Miles – The Travels of Charlotte Small Thompson 1799–1812 " Contemporary and Historical Maps: Charlotte Small (S. Leanne Playter/Andreas N. Korsos|Publisher: Arcturus Consulting)
 2006/2007: "David Thompson in Alberta 1787–1812"; "David Thompson on the Columbia River 1807–1812"; "The Explorations and Travels of David Thompson 1784–1812"; "Posts and Forts of the North American Fur Trade 1600–1870"  Contemporary and Historical Maps: David Thompson (Andreas N. Korsos|Publisher: Arcturus Consultin
 2010 : Official Documentary of Thompson was released by national geographic, ca.

References

Notes
 
 
 
 
 2006: "Moccasin Miles – The Travels of Charlotte Small Thompson 1799–1812" Contemporary and Historical Maps: Charlotte Small (S. Leanne Playter/Andreas N. Korsos|Publisher: Arcturus Consulting)

Further reading
  Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection

External links

 David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America 1784–1812 Vol's I and II, Champlain Society 1916, PDF (B/W) 25.1 MB
 Complete text of David Thompson's Narrative (Tyrrell edition) Champlain Society digital collection
 Complete text of David Thompson's Narrative (Glover edition) Champlain Society digital collection
 
 Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
 David Thompson: Map Maker, Explorer and Visionary, online exhibit on Archives of Ontario website
 DavidThompson200: bicentennial commemorations of Thompson's explorations
 KSPS Public TV (PBS), , Narrative of David Thompson's life and travels. / Feb 2011
 The Writings of David Thompson edited by William E. Moreau. Three volumes.
 David Thompson Papers, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library 

North West Company
English surveyors
Canadian people of Welsh descent
English cartographers
English explorers
Canadian cartographers
Canadian male canoeists
Canadian explorers
Canadian surveyors
English emigrants to pre-Confederation Canada
Explorers of British Columbia
Explorers of Canada
North West Company people
People from Westminster
People from Montreal
Pre-Confederation Quebec people
Interior of British Columbia
Hudson's Bay Company people
1770 births
1857 deaths
History of the Pacific Northwest
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
Explorers of Washington (state)
People educated at Grey Coat Hospital
English explorers of North America
Welsh topographers
Burials at Mount Royal Cemetery
Clara Mildred Thompson (27 November 1881 – 17 February 1975) was a prominent historian and dean of Vassar College where she also chaired its history department. She is the author of two studies about southern Reconstruction and taught history at University of Georgia from 1948 to 1952. Thompson was also active in the political campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt and worked as an educational delegate to Europe and the United Nations.

Early life and education
Clara Mildred Thompson was born on November 27, 1881, in Atlanta, Georgia to Robert and Alice Thompson. Thompson attended public schools until high school where she attended an all Girls' High School. She was influenced to apply to Vassar College by the Vassar College women she met. In 1899, She was enrolled in Vassar College and graduated in 1903.

Thompson entered Columbia University in 1906. There she was a student under Reconstruction scholar William Archibald Dunning, becoming conspicuously the only woman member of the scholars known as the "Dunning men". Thompson earned her master's degree in 1907 and her Ph.D. in 1915 from Columbia University.

Career 
Thompson began working in 1903 as an English and History teacher at the Wilford School, a private school, in Baltimore, Maryland. She would join Vassar's History department in 1908 as a substitute teacher. Thompson was able to grow into an assistant professor in 1915, then associate professor in 1917. In 1923, Thompson became the second dean for Vassar College. As a dean, she decided to focus on student's mental health. She was able to give the Vassar student body access to their first consultant psychiatrist. Which they held in her office. Thompson became the person to live in the Dean's House built by Ruth Adams in 1932. In 1940 a scholarship from one of the seven 75th anniversary scholarships was named after Thompson because of her impact on Vassar. Once she retired forming being a dean in 1948, after 25 years she still worked with the education industry. For four more years, she works as a consultant in education and a history professor at the University of Georgia. For an additional year, Thompson work as the dean of women at Free Europe University in Exile. An American ran university for young people from Soviet-bloc countries.

Publications
Thompson contributed to Studies in Southern History and Politics Inscribed to William Archibald Dunning . . . by His Former Pupils the Authors (1914), the only woman to publish in the Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography's studies of seven southern states. She later published Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social, Political: 1865-1872 (1915), considered one of the series' strongest titles. One contemporaneous critic called the study an "interesting and comprehensive volume".

Politics
Mildred Thompson was known for her political involvement, like supporting women's rights by participating in the women's suffrage parade in New York with Lucy Maynard Salmon in 1911. As she was a close friend to Eleanor Roosevelt, Thompson was active in politics during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. She was the chairman of the woman's division of the Democratic National Committee and head of the educator's committee during FDR's 1936 campaign for re-election. Thompson campaigned for Roosevelt in the years 1936, 1940, and 1944.

In 1944, Thompson was appointed by the state department as the only woman representative to help represent CAME or Conference of Allied Ministers of Education in London, working with Commissioner of Education, John W. Studebaker, and Representative J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.

Personal life and death 
Thompson was also known for speaking on a popular radio program Information, Please! along with hosting her radio program Listen, the Women.

Thompson died on February 17, 1975, at the age of 93.

Citations

Works cited 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1881 births
1975 deaths
People from Atlanta
Vassar College alumni
Columbia University alumni
American educators
American feminists (guitar, vocal) is a 1976 album by Richard Thompson. It was released by Island Records as a career retrospective after he and his wife Linda had gone into semi-retirement from the business of making and performing music following the release of Pour Down Like Silver (1975).

Most tracks are unreleased recordings from Thompson's career to date - though the two instrumental tracks were recorded specifically for this compilation. (guitar, vocal) spans Thompsons's early years with Fairport Convention as well as the time he spent performing and recording as a duo with wife Linda. The release was notable for two live cuts from the 1975 Richard and Linda Thompson tour — "Night Comes In" and "Calvary Cross" — which featured lengthy guitar solos by Thompson, and for the Fairport Convention tracks "The Ballad of Easy Rider" featuring an excellent vocal from Sandy Denny which was an unreleased track from the Liege & Lief sessions and "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman" which had been recorded for and then omitted from that group's Full House album.

(guitar, vocal) has been out of print for some years now. Several tracks first released as part of this compilation have subsequently been included as bonus tracks on remastered Fairport Convention and Richard & Linda Thompson albums issued by Island Records. However the BBC version of Mr Lacey was unavailable elsewhere, until its release on the 19-CD boxset Sandy Denny : it did not feature on the recent Fairport Convention boxset.

Track listing
All songs written by Richard Thompson except where indicated otherwise.

Side one
 "Time Will Show the Wiser" (Emitt Rhodes) – this recording was included on Fairport Convention's first album. – 3:03
 "Throwaway Street Puzzle" (Ashley Hutchings, Thompson) – originally released as the b-side to "Meet On The Ledge," the single from Fairport's second album What We Did On Our Holidays. This song was a bonus track on the 2003 re-issue of What We Did On Our Holidays. – 3:18
 "Mr Lacey" (Hutchings) – this version is from a 1968 BBC radio broadcast is included on the 19-CD boxset Sandy Denny. – 2:53
 "The Ballad of Easy Rider" (Roger McGuinn) – Recorded during the sessions in 1969 for Fairport's Liege & Lief album. The 2002 re-issue of the Unhalfbricking album included "The Ballad of Easy Rider" as a bonus track as it was felt that the song fitted better with the mix of contemporary songs on that album rather than the traditional feel of Liege & Lief. – 4:34
 "Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman" (Thompson, Dave Swarbrick) – originally recorded during the 1970 sessions for Fairport's Full House album. Thompson was unhappy with the vocals and insisted that the track be omitted from the original album. However, the track was included on the 2001 re-issue of Full House. The recording included on (guitar, vocal) has extra vocals by Linda Thompson recorded in 1975. – 5:23

Side two
 "Sweet Little Rock 'n Roller" (Chuck Berry) – recorded in concert at the Troubador club in Los Angeles during Fairport's 1970 tour. – 4:18
 "A Heart Needs a Home" – this is a different recording and arrangement of the song included on the Hokey Pokey album. This track was included in the 2000 Island Years compilation. – 4:04
 "The Dark End of the Street" (Dan Penn, Chips Moman) – recorded during a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in April 1975. The same recording was included as a bonus track on the 2004 re-issue of the Pour Down Like Silver album. – 4:22
 "It'll Be Me" (Jack Clement) – recorded during a concert at Oxford Polytechnic in November 1975. The same recording was included as a bonus track on the 2004 re-issue of the Hokey Pokey album. – 4:22

Side three
 "Flee As a Bird" (trad., arr. Thompson) – recorded in 1976 for this compilation. – 3:11
 "Night Comes In" – recorded during a concert at Oxford Polytechnic in November 1975. The same recording was included as a bonus track on the 2004 re-issue of the Pour Down Like Silver album. – 12:24

Side four
 "The Pitfall/The Excursion" – recorded in 1976 for this compilation. – 3:02
 "Calvary Cross" – recorded during a concert at Oxford Polytechnic in November 1975. The same recording was included in the 2000 Island Years compilation. – 13:27

Personnel
 Richard Thompson — vocals, guitars, dulcimer, mandolin
 Sandy Denny, Judy Dyble, Iain Matthews, Linda Thompson — vocals
 Simon Nicol — guitars, mellotron
 Dave Swarbrick — violin, mandolin
 John Kirkpatrick — accordion
 Pete Ross — harmonica
 Ian Whiteman — electric piano, harmonium
 Pat Donaldson, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Pegg — bass
 Timi Donald, Martin Lamble, Dave Mattacks — drums

Production personnel
 Joe Boyd, Todd Lloyd — producer
 John Wood — producer, engineer
 Victor Gamm — engineer

1976 albums
Richard Thompson (musician) albums
Island Records albums
Albums produced by John Wood (record producer)